I was 21 when I met Tom at a party in Manhattan. I was working as a flight attendant and somehow believed that I was pretty sophisticated. Going to a party with my roommate’s friends from NYU Graduate School of Social Work did not seem very exciting but I finally agreed to go so she would not have to drive alone. This one evening changed both my life and Tom’s.
It was truly love at first sight for me and I believe for both of us. We went out every chance we got based on my flight schedule. Tom proposed on his 28th birthday after our dating for 9 months. In retrospect, almost all our time together involved alcohol, which was very typical in the sixties in New York City.
We were married 11 months after we met, and this was in the days before most couples lived together before marriage. I prided myself on being able to keep up drink for drink with Tom, but somehow marriage changed all that. I quickly realized that while drinking was part of my social life it was the major part of Tom’s daily life. I loved Tom deeply. As many family members of loved ones with substance abuse issues, I learned to live every day worrying about the worst, but hoping and praying for the best. The best would always have been that Tom was able to find the desire and strength to eliminate alcohol from his life.
Alcoholism was a big issue in Tom’s family when he was growing up. One of his strongest memories was working as a camp counselor in the Adirondacks at 17. He and two other counselors got someone to buy them 3 quarts of a cheap beer. They finished two bottles and the other two boys said they should just leave the last one in the woods. Tom said he knew he could not walk away and leave that one bottle so he went back and got it later. This was Tom’s first experience with alcohol, and he believed it was the beginning of his life-long struggle against it.
Tom worked in advertising, where the three-martini lunch was born, so drinking was simply part of his workday. He continued to drink heavily from New York to Baltimore to Detroit. It affected his job performance, his health and his family life. Spouses of substance abusers spend much of their time and energy attempting to maintain a home free of conflict.
Tom’s family was the most important thing in his life, and he finally recognized that he would have to choose between them and alcohol. He unsuccessfully tried to stop numerous times and was not one of the many who were able to be helped through Alcoholics Anonymous. I don’t think either he or I knew what exactly caused him to believe that he could walk away from the alcohol that had dominated his life into his early forties, but somehow he was able to do it. This decision was life changing for Tom and his family. Anyone with a loved one who had to fight against addiction of any kind knows what an all-encompassing and continuing struggle it is. I will always be grateful that we were one of the fortunate families, because Tom was able to remain alcohol free for 35 years.
I somehow had the mistaken belief that Tom had gone through his major life struggle and his life would flow more smoothly, but that was not the case. He got bacterial meningitis when he was 65 on a business trip to New York. By the time I got there he was being moved to the Intensive Care Unit of a New York hospital, and he did not recognize me. He was in a coma for 7 weeks and in the hospital for 5 months. He had to learn how to speak, stand and walk with help from some wonderful therapists. Bacterial meningitis is a devastating disease, and Tom was left with many physical issues including amputations of his toes. He left home for New York on August 3 as a healthy 65-year-old and returned home on December 12 with disabilities that affected the rest of his life. We were worried about how he could handle a rehabilitation that would last for several years after his earlier struggle. Once again he fought back, did not complain, and was able to return to a good life.
Tom was a regular guy who lived a routine life with good and bad times. I am not sure what a hero is, but when I look back at the challenges this “regular guy” faced with courage, like many regular people do every day, he certainly meets my definition of a hero.